Newslinks for Sunday 24th August 2014

Terrorism 1): Hammond warns that unless stopped, ISIL will strike on British soil

“ISIL members are turning a swathe of Iraq and Syria into a terrorist state as a base for launching attacks on the West…Unless they are stopped, sooner or later they will seek to strike us on British soil…we have assisted the Kurdish peshmerga in containing and pushing back ISIL with UK military aircraft delivering equipment and we intend to deliver east European ammunition and weaponry with which they are already familiar” – Sunday Times (£)

Fears that Nato summit in south Wales will be jihadi target – WalesOnline

Terrorism 2): Beheader Jihadi John identified

“MI5 and MI6 have identified the British fighter suspected of murdering the American journalist James Foley, senior government sources confirmed last night. The masked man with a London accent, who is said to be known to fellow fighters as ‘Jihadi John’, was seen in the shocking video of Foley’s death released by the Isis extremist army last week. While sources gave no details of the man they have identified, a key suspect is Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, 23, who left his family’s £1m home in Maida Vale, west London, last year” – Sunday Times (£)

Terrorism 3): Cameron rejects knee-jerk legislation

“On Wednesday, Cameron chaired a meeting in the Cabinet Room with most of the principals engaged in this crisis: Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, Charles Farr, director of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, and others. Though the PM’s instinct was not to announce knee-jerk measures, he went around the table testing this premise. ‘I think the laws and rules are adequate,’ he said, ‘but if you disagree, now is the time to say it.’ None of those present dissented from his core assumption” – Matthew d’Ancona, Sunday Telegraph

Terrorism 4): Davis says May’s response lacks focus and urgency

“The British intelligence agencies presumably knew what was going on. Yet the Home Secretary’s response as recently as yesterday seemed lacking in both focus and urgency. Asbos for terrorists? It is hard to imagine ISIS killers quaking in their boots over that. So why have we done so little so far? We should target the young men who have rushed to take up arms on behalf of ISIS, an organisation that purports to be a state – and a hostile one at that. It is astonishing to me that this action alone is viewed as legal, let alone what they do once there” – David Davis, Mail on Sunday

Military intervention will be needed to defeat this mass psychosis – Janet Daley, Sunday Telegraph

Walker warns Bercow to let MPs quiz Mills

“The man who led John Bercow’s campaign to be Speaker has warned him he could lose his job over his controversial plan to give Parliament’s top job to an inexperienced Australian woman. Senior Conservative MP Charles Walker told Mr Bercow he must give in to demands for MPs to quiz Australian official Carol Mills about allegations of misconduct before she is given the £200,000-a-year job of Commons Clerk…The disclosure came as Mr Bercow launched a desperate attempt to save his career yesterday by promising to slash the powers of Ms Mills” – Mail on Sunday

Burrowes: I could have died in chaotic A&E department

“An MP who suffered a ruptured appendix has told how he could have died after being left to wait for more than 12 hours on a trolley in a ‘chaotic’ A&E department. David Burrowes had expected the emergency department at North Middlesex Hospital in Edmonton, North London, to be quiet when he was taken there in agony at 5.30am. Instead, he found patients crammed into every corner – and beleaguered staff ‘run ragged’” – Mail on Sunday

Miliband aide “called Northerners backward”

“A senior aide to Ed Miliband called Northerners ‘backward’ over choosing women MPs in a blazing row with a Labour veteran, it was claimed last night. Anna Yearley, the Labour leader’s political secretary and ‘fixer’, is said to have made the remark…Austin Mitchell, 79, who is retiring as Labour MP for Great Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, at the next Election, said Ms Yearley told him Labour activists in the North had blocked moves to promote more female MPs – and she was determined to make them toe the line” – Mail on Sunday

Darling to focus on oil figures claims in debate

“Alistair Darling is preparing a sustained attack on Alex Salmond’s North Sea oil estimates when the two men meet tomorrow night in the second televised debate of the referendum campaign. The Better Together leader’s strategists believe that last week’s intervention in the independence campaign by the oil tycoon Sir Ian Wood, in which he challenged the ­Scottish Government’s oil and gas forecasts, is key to defeating the First Minister” – Scotland on Sunday

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